


The Thing About Mornings, Too

by fialka



Category: Castle
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-28
Updated: 2009-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-03 22:02:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fialka/pseuds/fialka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This morning, Castle feels a sense of accomplishment. After all the months of teasing, he's finally got his muse in his bed. Sequel to The Thing About Mornings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thing About Mornings, Too

**Author's Note:**

> Follows on from The Thing About Mornings. I didn't plan to write it, but the muse kept bringing me flowers and beating me over the head with them till I did.

[Part One, here. ](22693)

THE THING ABOUT MORNINGS, TOO  
by Fialka

 

Rick Castle can pinpoint the exact moment he fell for Detective Kate Beckett. Day damn one, as a matter of fact. Okay, the very end of day one, and had he expected her to turn down his invitation to dinner? No, he most certainly had not. Wasn't it every fan's dream to have dinner with the creator of their hero, and wasn't Kate Beckett a fan of Derrick Storm? And he'd _certainly _not expected Miss Buttoned-Up Supercop to turn him down with a leer and a whisper of opportunities lost, and to walk -- no, saunter -- no, _sashay _\-- away with all the loose-hipped swagger of a model on a Fashion Week catwalk.

_Swagger_. Yes, that was the word. Beckett had class, and Beckett had swagger, and how often did he see those two things wrapped up in a woman who was six feet tall in heels and wore them anyway? But it wasn't just the class and the swagger and the legs (dear god, the legs); it was the chutzpah of showing up at one of his readings in a dress that screamed _fuck me against a wall_ not because she wanted him to, but because she wanted him to know he _couldn't._

By then, of course, it hardly mattered. He'd already had his _coup de foudre_, his struck-by-lightning moment, and all it had taken was a blue buttondown shirt seen from the back.

  
\---

This morning, Castle feels a sense of accomplishment. After all the months of teasing, he's finally got his muse in his bed.

Of course, this isn't quite the way he'd originally imagined getting Kate Beckett into bed. Originally, it had involved a shockingly expensive dinner, maybe followed by dancing of the old sort. Or maybe preceded by a show, but anyway, a date. A real, honest-to-goodness, pick you up at eight, walk you to the door after kind of date. The kind he hasn't had in...well, actually, quite a while. Oh, he's had sex, lots of sex, but that usually involves a chance meeting of like-minded adults at some function or another, not the held-breath footshuffle of _would you like to go out with me sometime_? He's actually even tried that on Beckett, more than once, and got shot down every damned time. Still, he'd have kept on trying. He's bored of women he doesn't have to chase, and experience has taught him that if he goes on asking, eventually he'll wear her down. Then he can get on with part two, which involves sweeping her off her feet. Or at least finding out if it's even possible to sweep an immensely practical woman who's nearly as tall as he is off her feet at all. He'd expected, at the very least, for the trying to go on being damned good fun.

Instead, he got her shot, and while he might, in his more outlandish moments, have imagined carrying Beckett over his threshold and off to bed, he hadn't expected this would be because she couldn't walk up the stairs. He hadn't expected her morning-after coma to be the result of a hefty dose of Demerol and not sexual satisfaction. Most of all, he hadn't expected to spend their first night together sitting by her side fully dressed, instead of undressed and in bed with her, making her pulse race instead of thinking about checking to be sure she still had one.

'She's lost so much weight, Dad. That can't be good.'

He hasn't heard Alexis come in, and he's not quite sure if he should be embarrassed about being caught hovering over his muse. At least Beckett no longer looks like an escapee from Madame Tussaud's on a hot day. Yes, she's still horribly pale, but it's more of a fashionably vampyric pallor now, less grey and cadaverous than three weeks ago.

'Don't worry, pumpkin,' he whispers, giving his daughter a one-armed hug. 'We'll feed her up before we release her back into the wild.

Alexis makes a noise, something between a cluck of impatience and an 'mmm' of concern. 'Well, you better feed yourself before you fall over. It's past noon and even Grandma's up and knocking around the kitchen. She sent me to find out where you were. And by the way, if Detective Beckett wakes up and finds you watching her sleep --' 

'I know, Death by the Fiery Glare of Doooom.'

Alexis makes the noise again, and is gone. Castle leans back in the chair, trying to adjust his back to its now rather uncomfortable form. He doesn't need to be brooding over Beckett, he knows. She's long out of danger, and at the rate she's pushing herself through rehab, she'll probably be back at her desk by the end of the month. She's also well enough to be extremely grumpy when she's awake, which might actually be the secret to why he's sitting here while she's still asleep.

'Castle?'

Or not. Damn, first the lies and the poker face, then the feigning sleep; he's starting to wonder if this dissembling thing comes much more easily to Beckett than he ever dreamed.

'Yeah. I'm here.'

She moves slowly, rolling from her side to stretch out on her back. He takes the opportunity to perch in the newly vacated space, still warm from her curled-up legs.

'Castle, why are you in my apartment?'

'I'm not,' he answers. 'You're in mine.'

Her sleepy gaze finally focuses on his face. She rubs at her eyes weakly, as if trying to make this picture go away and another one appear. One in which she's home, safe and strong, about to jump out of bed and start the day. 'You agreed to this,' he reminds her. 'You're not well enough to be on your own just yet, and you were sick of the hospital. Remember?' 

As if to prove his point, her muscles lose the battle with gravity, and the arm she's raised to wipe the sleep from her eyes drops heavily to her chest.

'I remember. So I'm hiding in the bat cave.'

'You're not hiding, you're recovering. Which is going to take some time.' At least six months, according to the surgeons who put her insides back together, closer to a year according to the physical therapist. According to Beckett, she should have been fine last week, but a shredded sciatic nerve won't regenerate by sheer force of will. 

Her eyes are wide open now, slightly dilated with fear. Of him and his bat cave, maybe. Maybe the possibility -- slim, but still present -- that she'll walk again, but she'll never be able to run, which would mean never being able to pass the physical to get back on the line. Which would mean, essentially, the end of her career.

'But right now, first things first,' he says, taking her hand, faking a brightness he doesn't feel. 'Martha makes a mean eggs benedict for Sunday brunch. You feeling up to joining us?'

She moves her hand gently out of his. 'I'm not very hungry.'

'You have to eat something besides iron supplements.'

He gets up. Give her space, Martha keeps telling him. It's true, he does have a tendency to hover when his women get hurt -- Castle ignores the fact that he's just mentally placed Kate Beckett inside his tiny family circle -- but what else should he do? Let her fall instead of reaching out to catch her? Leave her rehab to the hour a week the police department's completely inadequate insurance would cover, when he's got all the money in the world?

He covers by going to retrieve Beckett's robe from the parallel bars in the corner of the room. It's a deep forest green, and yes, when he bought it he was indeed thinking about how it would shape itself around her, and bring out the colour of her eyes. Also about not being too extravagant, choosing thick terrycloth instead of silk and velvet. She was finally being transferred out of ICU and he'd wanted her to have something dignified to wear when people came to visit, but a nightgown felt too personal, and he wasn't even sure it was the kind of thing she'd wear. So the robe, which he chickened out of giving her directly, draping it over her while she was asleep. She knows, of course, that it's from him, but neither of them have mentioned that. Like they don't mention where he's sleeping if she's in his bedroom, or his sudden desire to furnish it with rehab equipment and a 48 inch flatscreen with built-in dvd player and cable tv.

'Come on,' he says, holding the robe spread open, high in front of his face. 'I won't even peek at your nighties.'

What he's really saying is, I won't watch you try to get out of bed. I'll pretend not to notice what a struggle every movement is, and how little patience you have for yourself like this.

'Damn it, Castle,' she snaps, as if she's read his thoughts. 'If you want me to get up, give me a goddamn hand.'

She's sitting up with her feet on the floor, but that's as far as she can get by herself. Castle hangs the robe over his shoulder and extends his hands to her, palms up and forearms level, like the therapist showed him. Maximum support for her, maximum leverage for him. Together, they get her to her feet, and he's relieved to see she seems relatively steady as he drapes the robe around her shoulders and helps her get her arms through the sleeves.

'You ready?' he asks softly. It's more than ready to move, it's ready to face his family, to sit at a table and have a meal with him and his mother and his child.

'No,' she answers, in one of those amazing, disarmingly honest moments of hers. He can't quite read the look in her eyes, more used to reading them from roughly level height. Barefoot, she's so much smaller than he thinks of her, thinner, paler, porcelain-fragile. As if the formidable Detective Beckett is just another character he's made up, no more the real Kate than Nikki Heat.

Her shoulders feel tense under his hands, or maybe he's making her tense by standing too close. Her own hands are pressed flat against his chest as if to say _no further_, but he's already lifting her face, finding her lips, brushing them oh-so-softly. Once. Twice.

'I'm so sorry,' he whispers for the ten thousandth time.

She pushes gently against his chest, finally forcing him to move away. 'You didn't shoot me, Castle, Delgado did. Now get me my crutches and stop feeling so damn guilty, okay?'

She sways slightly when he lets go of her shoulders, rebalancing to transfer the majority of her weight to the leg she can still feel. He waits a moment to be sure she's got it before moving off to get the crutches. Wooden, under the arm crutches, even though the metal ones with armbands are supposed to be better for long-term use. One look at her face when the therapist brought her a pair of those and he knew exactly what she was thinking -- _forever_. He'd gone downstairs to the hospital pharmacy and bought her a pair of wooden ones straight away. Uncomfortable, less controllable, bad for her back and wrists and shoulders. But clearly made for temporary use. And then Alexis had gone and painted them neon pink, with little blue and yellow and green balloons and at least they made Beckett smile, just a tiny bit, whenever he handed them to her.

As she's smiling now, maneuvering her way carefully across the room. And Castle takes his own opportunity to stride, no to saunter, no, to _swagger_ just a little as he moves ahead to open the door, because he's finally kissed Kate Beckett and she doesn't seem to have minded at all.

===

Feedback is like chocolate - not necessary for life, but awfully yummy when you get some: fialka62@yahoo.com


End file.
